This has been creeping up on me for awhile, but as of today I officially have a pet peeve: CALLING PORTLAND PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE. (Joining the proclamation that “there are no black people in Portland” already ensconced in the “Portland-related sayings” folder of my pet peeve collection.) What a meaningless, needling, and super passive aggressive bullshit cop-out thing to say. I’m tired of hearing it—is that direct enough for you? Am I being sufficiently clear and upfront about my feelings here? And yet, it just keeps happening. From three—three!—I, Anonymouses sitting in the I, Anonymous mailbag today:

Dear passive aggressive Portland. Fuck you. I’ve always hated that people here are such fucking pussies that they feel the need to address their grievances by writing anonymous complaints in this column or talking shit through the grapevine. If you have a fucking problem, then have some fucking gumption and stand up and voice it. If I piss you off, tell me I’m pissing you off and we’ll figure out how to work together harmoniously. It doesn’t do anyone any good to harbor resentments and express them months down the line behind a mask of unnamed text. Portland is an oasis of creative freedom in a desert of brainwashed corporate slaves, let’s grow the fuck up and get all the high school bullshit out of the way.

Bullshit like making blanket layman behavioral psychology diagnoses of an entire fucking metropolitan area because you have girl problems?

Dear Portland, It seems most appropriate to address you by utilizing the column
which best exemplifies your passive-aggressive, hypocritical ways. When I moved
from Oakland five years back, I was awed by your open arms and generosity for
about three months before I realized you were lying to my face and talking shit
behind my back. While likely a quaint place to raise a family, I’ll leave you without having met
an available girl who wasn’t a selfish snob looking for some pathetic sap to
boss around. Presumably your omnipresent mustaches are your males’ way of
announcing their lack of independent thought.

This one goes on and on. Read the rest of it to learn about some of the other ways it sucks that things didn’t work out here for this particular individual (sugary infused-vodka cocktails?! What were you thinking, Portland?!), plus one more example of overused passive-aggressive bomb-dropping after the jump.

I’m impressed by your ability to attract mid-westerners seeking an alternative
to working for a living. You embrace those who wish they were artists but
aren’t. Unlike the mid-west, you have no idea what to do when it snows; being
in denial that it does so EVERY year.

You discuss beer unceasingly yet mostly drink flavorless PBR. I needn’t mention
your shitty wine, clueless distilleries or sugary infused-vodka cocktails.

Feigning vegetarian practices, your restaurants offer a shitty garden burger, a
tiny hummus plate or elementary-school cafeteria mac and cheese. While you
attempt a surprising range of ethnic foods considering your homogeny (How DO you
have more Thai restaurants than Thai people?) it is fittingly bland and
lackluster.

Your obsession with bicycles is indeed un-American, but I wish you’d learn to
drive. When I lament your incompetence while merging, you respond, “I know;
people won’t slow down and let you in!” proving your ignorance.
You love playing pretend sports like kickball. Hilariously, you don’t even
know the rules as they are the same as baseball. Watching the AAA Beavers is
easily the most enjoyable way to spend an evening with you, but you consider
them a cancer to be rid of.

Portland: Famous for its lack of vegetarian options (you have to go to the mid-west for that).

Dear Self Righteous Portlanders, Who the FUCK do you think you are? You are not my mother, brother, sister, or father. You have no right to assume things about me, condescend to me, or yell at me. Why do you feel the need to butt into people’s business with your opinions and actions? Is it because you think you are some sort of activist? First, you accuse me of neglecting my dog when she is clearly well fed, well trained, and well groomed (rescued even). You have probably never even had a dog, or you would have realized that dogs pant when it’s hot, that’s how they cool themselves down. Also, might I add, that yelling at me that you will, “fucking follow me home!” in public no less, just makes you look like the crazy bitch that you clearly are? Then, in the same week, you (different person…maybe) steal my cat (who has had a breathing problem her WHOLE life) and take it upon yourself to send her to the vet while I’m at work. They would have euthanized her if my roommate had not found the note you left on our doorstep, so DUH she’s not a stray if you found her at our house! How would you have felt when the missing cat signs went up and you realized you killed my cat? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Keep it to yourselves Portland ’cause next time it won’t be pretty. Actually, now that I think about it, you are probably not even from here because real Portlanders are passive agressive. Yeah, actually forget that I even wrote this, I don’t like confrontation.

Actually, that one doesn’t piss me off as much.

Marjorie Skinner is the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor, author of the weekly Sold Out column chronicling the area's independent fashion and retail industry, and a frequent contributor to the film and...

26 replies on “Oh Portland, You Are Sooooo Passive Aggressive (x3)”

  3. “oasis of creative freedom in a desert of brainwashed corporate slaves”

    Translation: “I moved here three years ago from California.”

  4. I don’t know where these jerks are meeting all these horrible Portlanders; I only know awesome people, so maybe they’re just crappy people who attract crappy companions.

    Also, SNOW

  5. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Portlander’s in general are passive aggressive. I did, however, have my dog taken to the pound by my neighbor of over a year. My dog was sniffing around the front yard, you know, doing dog stuff. An hour later I get a call from the pound saying my dog was found running amuck! When I asked where she’d been found, the address they gave was MY address. Luckily my neighbor agreed to bring my dog back with her from the pound. Maybe instead of taking her to the pound, she could’ve just said “Hey, I don’t like your dog walking around the front yard untethered!”

    I find this type of behavior more in the locals who grew up here than I do in people who have made there way from other parts of the country or world. I think it has more to do with people who have never ventured out of their own front yards (punny!) than it does with Portland specifically.

  6. I guess if they needn’t mention it, then I won’t needlessly defend our local wines, distilleries, and infused-vodka cocktails. (Mmmmm…)

  7. I’ll also address the “Portland has no black people” line. Folks: they are in north and NE Portland. Perhaps not in the proportion you’re used to wherever you came from, but there are plenty of black people around. Maybe you have no reason to come up to this part of town, and that’s fine, but they’re here. If you need more diversity, leave whatever SE Portland enclave you moved into.

    Don’t make me passive aggressive your ass.

  8. I’ve heard the term passive-aggressive throw around rather haphazardly by lots of people for a long time. Mostly by folks who obviously don’t really know what it means.

  11. A-fucking-men! I’ve met plenty of people here, both natives and non-natives alike, who were perfectly capable of resolving conflicts directly and effectively with no passive aggressive behavior to speak of. Do some folks swing all the way to the other extreme? Sure. But they do that everywhere. And even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that Portlanders *do* tend to be passive aggressive, would it be any better if everybody was constantly getting into each others’ faces, a la NYC? Not really.

    My other big pet peeve is people who move to Portland then complain about everything contained within Portland. I moved here from Michigan ten years ago, and while I have seen Portland become a bit more crowded and a bit more expensive, I still really like the place, the people in it and most of what I have going on around me at any given time. Somehow, I’ve managed to find a way to live with the moustaches, tall bikes, radical vegans and supposedly rude wait staff (really, people, they’re usually not that bad, and when they are… just leave a chintzy tip). So, PDX haters, STFU already! If you don’t like it here, there’s plenty of room for you back in Houston, Cleveland, Phoenix or wherever the hell it is you came from!

  13. I suspect a lot of this comes from transplants that talked themselves to believing that they were moving to the magical world of Oz. When Portland turned out to be populated with actual people, the illusion was smashed.

    Ie, the douche-bag the other night at a bar that moved from Orange County to Portland to try and find work (evidence alone that he had some crazy conception of Little Beirut that wasn’t true). Initially he was all about Portland but when the girls he was hitting on weren’t impressed with his belief that people in Southern California were better than Oregonians, he called them whores and left in a huff. Though, in fairness, he wasn’t being passive aggressive.

  14. I will say in defense of the ‘passive’ people, that I moved from the east coast in part because I was so tired of all the aggro ‘aggressive-aggressive’ people. If being passive aggressive makes you less of a douche, then I’m all for it.

  16. FUCK VEGETARIAN CUISINE.

    I don’t care if you can’t find a good veggie burger- why don’t eat a real hamburger ferfuckssakes?

  17. Oh, I would also argue that kickball is a sport, but I would also argue that it is GAY and for pussies who can’t play real sports.

  18. Seconds on the hatred of the aggro aggressives who move here and spend all their time complaining that we aren’t assholish enough, going on and on about how much more honest people are where they’re from.

    One: I’ve lived on the west coast all my life. I’ve met lots of people from the east one: they are hardly more honest; just louder.
    Two: you’re the one who moved here, feeb.

  19. “Seconds on the hatred of the aggro aggressives who move here and spend all their time complaining that we aren’t assholish enough, going on and on about how much more honest people are where they’re from.”

    I was born here.

  24. I guess you could call me one of those people. I love the town of my birth, but the nancy-pansyness really sucks some pale, cottage-cheese flavored, Anglo-Saxon bottom. It’s time to start telling it like it is, I don’t think it’s that hard.

  25. I dunno. “Like it is” is lots of things. I’m not a big fan of therapy-speak, but I’m from eastern Oregon originally, and I know what it is to grow up surrounded by idiots and shit kickers. There’s a lot to be said for people at least trying to get along.

  26. Again: I work with a fair amount of people who aren’t from here. I bet you do too. And it seems like all of them spend their first five years here AT LEAST going on and on about how we can’t make a bagel that’s up to their standards, or how we don’t know shit about barbecue, and above all else: we are somehow less honest that people were back in whatever shithole they fled because we aren’t constantly screaming at each other.

    And it’s just not true. Whenever I hear someone doing that one, I think, “Now what the hell are you so afraid of, little man?”

Comments are closed.